When it comes to tragic opera and heart-wrenching arias, it has to be Giacomo Puccini. Young Giacomo was born in Lucca, Italy in 1858, into a family of musicians and composers. On seeing his first opera, Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida, a 15-year-old Puccini said he “felt a musical window had opened”.

Now widely considered the ‘heir’ of Verdi, Puccini is known as one of the great composers of Italian opera. While his early work is traditional, late-19th-century Romantic Italian opera, Puccini became better known for writing in the verismo style – Italian for ‘realism’.